(In bed with) the Russians
Episodes
REVOLT AGAINST AI/Joe Costello
02 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comToday I chat with Joe Costello about the backlash to data cente...
Chatting about movies, liberalism, and American collapse
07 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comMarried with podcast, we catch up on some topics dear to our he...
GETTING DRONED
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor this vamp valley stream, I had Peter Korotaev on to talk ab...
The Politics of Ape and Machine w/Joe Costello
21 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor this week’s vamp valley stream, I’m publishing a talk t...
INFORMATION IS PACIFICATION W/DANIEL BESSNER
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor this week’s vamp valley stream, I’m joined by Daniel Be...
WE'RE ALL TRAPPED IN THE VAMPIRE CASTLE
06 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor this week’s vamp valley stream, I talked to C. Derick Var...
Pistachio Wars and Doom and Gloom
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comRowan and I were at UC Santa Barbara last month presenting Pist...
PLATFORMS WANT TO INGEST AND DESTROY
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For this anti-vamp stream from my newly established NY basement studio, I’m joined by Mike Pepi, author of Against Platforms. We talk about the fail...
Requiem for Nikolai Komyagin
27 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comEvgenia pays tribute to Nikolai Komyagin, the frontman of the R...
WE ARE ALL LUDDITES NOW
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor this anti-vamp stream from my newly established basement st...
Exiting the Slop Shop
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We record this on President’s Day to talk about the slop machine we all now inhabit and how all internet culture is an abusive psyop meant to keep u...
Jeffrey Epstein, American Exceptionalism, and a lesson from Russia
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk about how the Jeffrey Epstein scandal/spectacle fits in...
New Year's Eve Banya Session
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We recorded most of this from inside a banya on New Year’s Eve in San Francisco as a rainstorm raged outside. We had to pause several times because ...
Epstein Christmas Special ft. Vampire Valley
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe dial in on Christmas Day from sleeping gas San Francisco to ...
Fighting the vampires
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We dial in to talk about my Silicon Valley Soviet immigrant tech bro origins story, my early anti-tech documentary attempts, and the anti-Silicon Vall...
The new Sy Hersh doc is a waste of time
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe went to a private preview of Cover-Up, the new Sy Hersh docu...
Pistachio Wars Q&A at the Roxy — Yasha Levine w/ Will Menaker
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Posting the Q&A Will Menaker and I did after Pistachio Wars screened in NYC’s Roxy Cinema on November 6th, 2025. Chinatown made flesh, insane consum...
Spinal Tap 2: Senility Files
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We get back into our old groove of recording right before bed. We talk movies. Specifically we talk about the horrible, senile sequel to the genius or...
Sam Kriss, the empty vessel
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We come back from our break to do some light but cutting literary gossip and criticism. Our focus: the millennial essayist Sam Kriss. Kriss is one of ...
What Russians think about the American Right w/Artur Dugin
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe’re posting part two of our conversation with Dmitriy Khvor...
Ghost
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We had a small 35th anniversary screening of Ghost at Kingston last Saturday and I had a talk with Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the screenplay and won ...
CHARLIE KIRK AND THE INFLUENCER MADE FLESH
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A YASHA LEVINE VAMPIRE CASTLE TRANSMISSION With the Charlie Kirk assassination, political influencers are freaking out. It’s dawning on them that th...
Sovereign Art
24 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe dial Moscow to talk to art curator and philosopher Dmitriy K...
Israel through the looking glass
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe put on our matching army green outfits to talk to Ori Goldbe...
Russia looking for a new idea
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe had filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov on again to talk Russian polit...
Cannibalistic America w/Greg Grandin
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe have a great time chatting with historian Greg Grandin about...
All the info and no power
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Been thinking about the Vampire Castle that is the internet and how we’re being drained by information, so I sat down to talk about it a bit.I come ...
Dialing in from Moscow
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia joins me on the phone from the Duchy of Moscow for a late night convo about what’s happening in Russia and about what to her feels like the ...
We are all sick in the head now
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Andrew Kay about the political and cultural aspects of psychiatric disorders — looking specifically at how OCD has gone mainstream becaus...
White Devils w/Rania Khalek
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe got out of bed to talk to Rania Khalek — who joined us fr...
BOOK CLUB #1: Alienated by design
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comIf you missed it this morning, here is a recording of our first...
DON'T BOMB IRAN
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe do some pillow talk about Iran — discussing the year Evge...
With the vampires
15 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We lie in bed, do pillow talk about our attempt to put a pie in Curtis Yarvin’s face and the cowardice of today’s media personalities — and how...
American Identity Crisis w/John Ganz
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk to John Ganz about how the USA began to unravel in the ...
The Industrial Revolution Killed Democracy w/Joe Costello
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joe Costello returns to the show (and joins us in our attic) to talk about how the industrial revolution killed American democracy. Among topics we di...
Who gets Dick? w/John Dolan
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comJohn Dolan (aka the infamous War Nerd) joins us to talk about P...
Park Avenue Whistleblower w/Nick McDonell
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to novelist Nick McDonell — whose wonderful book Quiet Street recently reviewed — about his life among the most privileged people on the...
The Century of the Modified Self w/Oliver Bateman
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWhile trans rights provide fuel to America’s never-ending cul...
Eunuchs by choice?
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the Twitter scandal I unwittingly caused by talking about the connection between children and art. What was meant as an offhand remark made...
Red Bourgeoisie w/Branko Milanovic
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe have Branko Milanovic, an economist born in Yugoslavia, on t...
Talking about "Too Hot To Work" and other harem/incel fantasies
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss Evgenia’s essay on Too Hot To Work. Some of the things we talk about are: the crisis of liberal feminism, incels under communism, how soc...
All is not well here
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe recorded this ep on the centennial anniversary of the Great ...
NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS LIVE! #1
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comAs promised here’s the live taping of our AGAINST NIHILISM ev...
Hollywood Refugee w/Joshua Turek
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to poet and stand-up comedian Joshua Turek about today’s cultural and political crisis and ways to deal with it. We get into Joshua’s jour...
Trump and Tariffs and Political Taboos w/Joe Costello
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to our friend Joe Costello about Trump’s tariffs, democracy, deindustrialization, the Yeltsinification of America, and the innate human desi...
Shitcoins for shitocracy w/Jacob Silverman
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
People compare Trump to Hitler or to Putin. But for us the closest historical comparison is Boris Yeltsin. So today we talk to Jacob Silverman about T...
Nobody likes being a loser w/Will Menaker
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comEvgenia and I talk to Will Menaker about the left-right whiplas...
Art Church w/Alexander Melamid
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk with Alexander Melamid, the most famous Soviet-American artist of his generation. He moved to NYC in late 1970s after being an underground art...
Vibe Shifts w/Mark Ames
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk to our friend Mark Ames about nihilism, cynicism, cultu...
Red Scare Bonus Pillow Talk
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe recorded this in bed over a week ago while we were in Miami ...
"Anora" and Russians at the Oscars
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe record an emergency ep to talk about Sean Baker’s sweep at...
Red Scared
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our discussion of Red Scare’s turn into a real red scare platform. We have been doing deconstruction of their rhetoric on Twitter the pa...
Back to the Future
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk about my recent epiphany that the scary and volatile wo...
Red Scare's Wake
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about the rise and fall of Red Scare, America’s once-coolest Soviet immigrant podcast. They lost their edge. We’re #1 now.Want to know mor...
The Theatre Experience with Matthew Gasda
08 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to playwright and theatre director Matthew Gasda about his plays, his theatre company Brooklyn Centre for Theatre Research, and the zeitgeist ...
Soviet lit for kids with Nika Dubrovsky
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Artist and author (and mother) Nika Dubrovsky is back on the show to talk about Soviet cartoons and Soviet literature for kids and the unique radical ...
Konstantin Kisin's KGB Konnektions
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our journey through the weaponized immigrant podcaster universe — this time with Konstantin Kisin. Konstantin, a hack comedian turned po...
David Lynch, LA fires and influencers
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Evgenia and I sit down in the attic to talk about David Lynch’s passing, my failed attempt to make a Lynch film in my early 20s, and the similaritie...
LA fires, billionaire farmers, and the end of the Hollywood dream
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk about the fires in Los Angeles, Evgenia’s precog abil...
The Secret Power of Lex Fridman
08 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We dissect the phenomenon of Lex Fridman, America’s newest and biggest court Russian, who leaves Masha Gessen in the dust.As fellow Russian immigran...
New Year Epiphanies
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Happy Near Year! We start off 2025 with this episode — recorded today in Turin. We talk about Yasha’s pneumonia, the struggles and insights we ha...
"The Russia That We Have Lost"
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Pavel Khazanov about the delusional ideations of the generation that ended the Soviet Union…children of serfs who began to identify thems...
Producing culture while the world burns
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe have a nice morning conversation. We talk about Yasha’s bl...
Birthday Epiphanies
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comOn the eve of my birthday we talk about the final disillusionme...
The Elex Ep: Make America Great Again and Again
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe broadcast to you from bed, barely awake, to talk about the e...
The Third Temple and the End of Judaism
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We get out of bed to talk with Rachel Feldman about messianic zionism and the Temple Movement, which wants to end Judaism as we know it and replace it...
Paul Schrader's Third Act
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comIn this bonus ep for subscribers we lie flat in bed late at nig...
St. Francis of Hollywood
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Late at night in bed we talk about Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed new film. Unlike most people out there, we were impressed and t...
Exiting the art world with Andrew Norman Wilson
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe got out of bed to talk to artist and filmmaker Andrew Norman...
October 7, 2024
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe’re back in bed, struggling to stay awake, talking about Oc...
Black Iron Prison
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe took our podcasting from bed concept to its logical conclusi...
The Hebrew god and Israeli bombs
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comFor the first half hour we talk about the Hebrew god, zionism, ...
Pavel Durov, tech billionaire dissident?
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We get out of bed again to do a quick ep on Pavel Durov, his arrest in France, what happens when you run a successful international tech business like...
The Jewish Question with Corey Robin
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe get out of bed to talk to Corey Robin about the evolution of...
Soviet Ships and Immigrant Deprogramming with Vadim Nikitin
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We got out of bed this time to talk to Vadmin Nikitin, a journalist and blogger born in Murmansk, about his immigrant experience.We had a really inter...
Prisoner swap and forced deportation
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An emergency broadcast from bed. We talk about the secretive and surprising prisoner exchange between America and Russia and get into the details of s...
Fact vs Fiction
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe are lying flat in our NY bed…back from Montreal. We talk a...
In Bed in Beacon
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comYasha is back from San Francisco and we talk about his reaffirm...
The Russians and the Norwegians
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about Daniel Simonsen, a Norwegian comic who is blowing up in the New York comedy world. We also talk about another Norwegian, Kris Borgli, wh...
The Russian take on the debate of the century
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe react to the debate, live from Manhattan, sitting on a couch...
Acid Immigration
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe chat about the trauma of immigration. Yasha likens it to a t...
Questions answered
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe answer a couple of listener questions and mostly digress a l...
Scenes from a marriage + theatre criticism
31 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe tried to be professional and recorded an episode after an in...
Stuck in Jahiliyyah
17 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comEven though Yasha was annoyed to be recording a podcast rather ...
More of the same
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comIt’s a bit uncomfortable to have to write this because we onl...
Breeders in decline
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk about the western phenomenon of “the MILF,” America...
Bedtime with Soviet zombies
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comAs we fall into the dream world we talk about the Soviet zombie...
Describing reality
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comAt bedtime we talked about nootropics and drugs, Israel, histor...
(In bed with) the Russians
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe’re trying out a new podcast format where we record from be...
Exiled and Loving It with Shaul Magid
27 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWhat is Jewish identity without zionism? We talk to professor a...
Against the Vortex book launch
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is a recording of a book launch of Anthony Galluzzo’s Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today — in which ...
Class traitors with Fergie Chambers
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Fergie Chambers of the Cox family — one of America’s wealthiest clans — about class traitors and the failure of individualist ideolo...
The waning cult of California
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comIn this last episode of the year we talk about our recent trip ...
Antisemitism über alles with Noah Kulwin (Part Two)
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk to Noah Kulwin of the Blowback pod about growing up amo...
Antisemitism über alles (Part One)
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We start off by talking about how Adam Curtis often says that the era of individualism is coming to an end and wonder whether nationalism will be one ...
Tarkovsky, a Soviet artist
27 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe have filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov back on the show to talk abou...
Crisis of Zionism
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk about the media reaction to Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and the zionist victim complex that allows people to rationalize any violen...
The dialectics of terrorism
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We didn’t want to add to the noise of emergency broadcasting after the October 7th Hamas attack. But we've been doomscrolling the news and have been...
Commie Camp
29 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to Katie Halper about the re-release of Commie Camp, her 2013 documentary about a Jewish socialist children’s camp in upstate New York that ...
A Russian in Estonia
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe are finally back and we talk about my film scouting trip to ...